The Liberal leader said the United States could invest more than $1 billion in Australia without being subject to Foreign Investment Review Board rules, but it was different for China’s state-owned enterprises.

Speaking during a trade mission in Beijing, Mr Barnett said that for investment by state-owned enterprises in China, any level of investment from $1 up goes through the FIRB process.

“I think Australia needs to correct that. That is giving the wrong signal to China, and I’ve no doubt, causes resentment,” he said.

Mr Barnett is trying to drum up a major Chinese backer for the $6 billion Oakajee port project in WA’s mid-west.

The project was indefinitely mothballed last year when Japan’s Mitsubishi decided to “slow down” work on the already-stalled plan, after talks with potential joint-venture partners languished.

Oakajee was to export iron ore from the magnetite-rich region, but the low-grade product fell out of favour with a slide in iron ore prices and wavering Chinese demand.

GRIEVANCE DEBATE (published)

Monday, 24 June 2013 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 197

CHAMBER

SPEECH

Date Monday, 24 June 2013 Source House

Page 197 Proof Yes

Questioner Responder

Speaker Rowland, Michelle, MP Question No.

Australia’s wellbeing depends on China

by: By David & Libby Koch –News Limited newspapers

May 10, 2012 10:33AM

THEFederal Budgetblueprint for your finances is that things will stay pretty much how they are now for the next 2 years despite further deterioration in Europe and a stagnant America.

Our saviour continues to be China and the Government is confident their economic boom will keep our commodity prices steaming ahead and our economy growing at 3.25 per cent. But if they’re wrong, and the wheels fall off the rickshaw, the financial impact will be devastating…………

UPWA is the only political party that calls a spade a spade.Channel 10 said outright on the phone that they wouldn’t run the ad because it criticises another media outlet. Lachlan Murdoch is on the company’s board. We’re sure the two are totally unrelated.Channel 7 refused the ad because “the creative execution was considered distasteful and potentially offensive to our audience, so we have decided to make a stand.” So noble. We created a new version of the ad with the ‘offensive’ bits blurred out. They didn’t respond.Channel 9 at least approved the ad, and ran it for four days. In fact, 615,800 people have already seen it on 9 across Brisbane. On Monday, they pulled the ad, and blamed it on a “coding error,” saying it never should have run. Whoopsadaisey.

That’s all three of Australia’s major commercial networks banding together to suppress media criticism. What’s more, it’s happening in ad election period where Australians ought to have the freedom to express their opinions and to criticise and speak truth to power.

We have lodged a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Dear Prime Minister Rudd, How come things got so bad – if Australia is still a lucky country? Your comment, please. Eddie Hwang President Unity Party WA info@unitywa.orgwww.unitywa.orghttp://unitywaorg.blogspot.com.auhttp://twitter.com/unitypartywa Phone/Fax: 61893681884 Environmental friendly – save the trees – use email.UPWA is the only political party that calls a spade a spade.A critical lack of staff and training in some nursing homes means that many elderly people are being left to die unnecessarily or are in great pain without proper palliative care.

Transcript

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: Many elderly people are being left to die unnecessarily or are in great pain because of a critical lack of staff and training in many of Australia’s nursing homes. Only one in five are receiving proper palliative care. Up to 50 per cent of residents are malnourished, with some people being left for entire days in soiled nappies. More than 200,000 people are living in Australian aged care facilities and advocacy groups now describe the shocking state of care being delivered as a national human rights emergency. This exclusive report from Margot O’Neill. MARGOT O’NEILL, REPORTER: Here’s how life in a Victorian nursing home ended last year for Margaret McEvoy, a post-War bride, much-loved nurse, midwife and foster carer who also raised six children and had 17 grandchildren: JANE GREEN, DAUGHTER: She was screaming in pain. There was a lot of people that came in contact with her care over those five days and they witnessed and they know I witnessed mum screaming in front of them and they still did not see that as being pain. MARGOT O’NEILL: Nursing home staff believed Margaret McEvoy was attention-seeking. JANE GREEN: She was portrayed to outreach nurses as being a whinger, she was attention-seeking. And he actually admitted that that’s what they had said to him, that she is only attention-seeking, so there’s nothing wrong with this lady. MARGOT O’NEILL: For five days staff tried to make Margaret McEvoy walk. In fact she had an undiagnosed broken thigh bone, a raging infection and severe dehydration. Her daughter Jane Green, who’s also a nurse, had to fight to get her mother taken to hospital where Margaret McEvoy was immediately put into palliative care. She died six weeks later. During those final weeks of attentive medical care in hospital, Jane Green was surprised to see the spirited, happy woman she knew as her mother re-emerge. JANE GREEN: We saw slivers of our mum again, we saw some happy times again, which we hadn’t seen. And I guess that – that highlighted and became much more of a contrast to what really had been going on for mum. MARGOT O’NEILL: What had been going on? It’s a familiar litany of complaints. Overworked and undertrained nursing home staff weren’t giving medication properly and were leaving Margaret McEvoy to wet herself or worse because no-one was available to take her to the toilet. JANE GREEN: Mum was horrified. She just couldn’t cope with that. MARGOT O’NEILL: Her mother lost weight and was constantly hungry. JANE GREEN: One evening, mum even got served raisin toast for a meal, a main meal. MARGOT O’NEILL: And she said the staff often abused her. JANE GREEN: The staff member called her a spoilt brat and a princess and that she always wanted her own way. You know, she had actually obviously suffered so much. When we weren’t there, what were they doing? Because they weren’t that kind to her when we were there. MARGOT O’NEILL: Her once confident mother seemed broken. JANE GREEN: She would not make eye contact with us. She became very shut down. She was gutted, basically. It was like seeing someone who had had the stuffing knocked out of them, basically. MARGOT O’NEILL: Jane Green has since spoken to a former staff member and other family with relatives in the same nursing home. They told her that other elderly residents were also abused. An incapacitated man had urine-soaked sheets thrown at him. Another woman was Despite Margaret McEvoy’s lifetime of nursing people and their children, she was denied appropriate medical care and she knew it. JANE GREEN: You know, that’s really heart-rending. And when I was leaving her on … (getting emotional and then crying) … Sorry. … … I’d leave her on Friday nights, she’d look at me and just say to me, “I’m alright. Please, just I’ll be OK. I’ll try and be OK.” And I knew she was just trying to be brave. MARGOT O’NEILL: Margaret McEvoy’s story is not isolated. In a NSW nursing home, nurse and health care lecturer Mardi Walker was horrified when she found her 91-year-old grandmother with exposed raw air cartilage due to lack of turning and one of her arms immobilised after staff botched injections. MARDI WALKER, GRANDDAUGHTER: They were coming along and injecting into the one spot all the time and she would just scream. Mum said it was horrific when they did it, she would just scream. MARGOT O’NEILL: But Paula Javurek was tough. She’d survived Nazi concentration camps. She wasn’t Jewish, but had fought the fascists and had been tortured and raped after being captured. She and her husband built a new life in Australia after the War. But when Paula Dvjorak’s family could no longer look after her, they told the nursing home that only female staff should wash her because of residual trauma from the war-time assaults. The family has since counted 70 times when male carers washed their nan who tried to fight them off. MARDI WALKER, GRANDDAUGHTER: I think she felt like she was almost probably back in war-time again. My mother often used to say, “Some days, Mardi, it was so bad,” sometimes I think she would’ve been better off in a concentration camp than where she is here. MARGOT O’NEILL: After finding their nan shivering from cold and suffering undiagnosed pneumonia, the family took her home. A week later, in February this year, Paula Javurek died. What you’re about to see next is confronting. These vivid photographs show 86-year-old dementia patient Betty Daly, who was constantly injured in yet another NSW nursing home. In 12 months, Betty Daly had 17 falls, breaking her hip, her ribs, tearing and cutting her skin, sometimes to the bone. BELINDA DALY, DAUGHTER: My sister reminded me last night when mum hurt her arm, she said she walked into the room and she could smell dead skin, like, rotten skin. And she lifted the bandage up and it came out and it stunk, she said. … And she’d say, “They’d hurt me, Belinda. They’re hurting me,” And I’d say, “Mum, where are they hurting you?” “They just grab me and they don’t care,” she’d say, you know, or, um, “They’re really rough and they talk to me mean. I don’t want you to leave, Belinda, because they don’t talk to me, they don’t talk to me right.” MARGOT O’NEILL: Betty Daly was the centre of a loving family of 11 children, 42 grandchildren, 86 great-grandchildren. Before her dementia deteriorated, she sent notes to them asking for help. Because of her own health problems, Belinda Daly could no longer care for her mother, but she kept a record of what she saw over three years. “… Mum couldn’t stop crying, said a nurse had been cranky with her …”. “… Mum found covered in nits …”. “… Mum’s nappy wasn’t changed from 9.30 am until 7.10 pm …”. “… Mum always getting cuts, bruises, skin tears, head lice, conjunctivitis, cold sores, mouth ulcers, urine infections …”. BELINDA DALY: She said, “Take me home, Belinda.” MARGOT O’NEILL: Betty Daly passed away in November last year. We could highlight many other recent cases from around Australia. Here’s some of the people we’ve spoken to, all profoundly traumatised from experiences with loved ones in nursing homes. Their complaints include: left in faeces and urine, medication not given, rough treatment, poor nutrition and hydration, left in a coma, verbal abuse, untreated broken bones and infections. Most of the nursing homes concerned were fully accredited by the Federal Government and families saw little change after going through the federal aged care complaints scheme. In fact, many say they experienced bullying by the nursing home when they did complain. Astonishingly, Jane Green was threatened with defamation for complaining about her mother’s treatment to the health practitioners authority. MAREE BERNOTH, CHARLES STURT UNI.: The accreditation and standards agency is charged with monitoring the standards of care in aged care, but that process isn’t working. MARGOT O’NEILL: Aged care lecturer Maree Bernoth has been listening to families’ stories for more than a decade. MAREE BERNOTH: It’s got worse. The stories are more heartbreaking and more incredible. Why is it that experiences of families who are telling us about older people dying in pain, older people dying malnourished and dehydrated does not get the same response from the Australian public as cattle being shipped overseas? MARGOT O’NEILL: It’s not just traumatised relatives complaining. Repeated surveys find that 20 to 50 per cent of nursing home residents are malnourished. The AMA says there’s not enough doctors to visit residents. The Nursing Federation says there’s not enough properly trained carers. Palliative Care Australia says only one in five residents receives proper palliative care. Margot O’Neill, Lateline. Do you have a comment or a story idea? Get in touch with the Lateline team byclicking here.

Channel 10 said outright on the phone that they wouldn’t run the ad because it criticises another media outlet. Lachlan Murdoch is on the company’s board. We’re sure the two are totally unrelated.

Channel 7 refused the ad because “the creative execution was considered distasteful and potentially offensive to our audience, so we have decided to make a stand.” So noble. We created a new version of the ad with the ‘offensive’ bits blurred out. They didn’t respond.

Channel 9 at least approved the ad, and ran it for four days. In fact, 615,800 people have already seen it on 9 across Brisbane. On Monday, they pulled the ad, and blamed it on a “coding error,” saying it never should have run. Whoopsadaisey.

That’s all three of Australia’s major commercial networks banding together to suppress media criticism. What’s more, it’s happening in ad election period where Australians ought to have the freedom to express their opinions and to criticise and speak truth to power.

We have lodged a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

The Department of Health and Ageing Responds

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 23/08/2013

Reporter: Margot O’Neill

A full statement of response from the Department of Health and Ageing. Department of Health and Ageing Statement: The Department of Health and Ageing is very concerned about the stories you have been airing about neglect in a small number of nursing homes and we are determined to ensure that these sorts of issues remain the exception and not the rule. It is important to note that there were more than 220,000 people that received care last year in nearly 3000 aged care homes, and while unfortunate issues will sometimes arise, the vast majority of residents in nursing homes live in safety and security. It is the role of the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency, which is independent of government and the Department, to thoroughly investigate aged care homes against 44 expected care and service outcomes. We are advised that the Agency makes announced and unannounced visits to all homes and where they find serious risk to residents, they do daily follow-up visits until issues are fixed. During 2011-12, the Agency conducted more than 6,400 visits to monitor the performance of aged care homes. And nearly half of these were unannounced visits. We are informed that in 2012-13, the Agency conducted interviews with more than 80,000 staff and volunteers and more than 50,000 residents and relatives as part of its accreditation activities. Moreover, the Agency observes the actions of staff to determine if the evidence outlined in written documentation is demonstrated in practice. The independent Agency can refer a home to the Department of Health and Ageing when we fully examine the issues identified, and we have, and use, the powers to impose serious sanctions – which are on the website for everyone to see. In addition we rely on our Complaints Scheme where people can provide us with information, anonymously if they choose, and every complaint is followed up. If someone isn’t satisfied with the Scheme, or a decision, the matter can be independently reviewed by the Aged Care Commissioner. The Department is very concerned that people who watch your program will think that the neglect shown is the norm – this is not borne out by the evidence and it is our aim to ensure that every resident of an aged care facility lives safely and securely and we are determined to take decisive action on any aged care provider who betrays the trust of older Australians and their families.

Tonight a former senior victorian public servant whose mother died recently in a nursing home speaks out against a system he says is failing Australia’s most vulnerable elderly. And lawyers believe families might be able to sue the Commonwealth for not safeguarding adequate standards of care in nursing homes and some families are pushing for a class action.

Transcript

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: Tonight a former senior Victorian public servant whose mother died recently in a nursing home speaks out against a system he says is failing Australia’s most vulnerable elderly.

Lawyers believe families might be able to sue the Commonwealth for not safeguarding adequate standards of care in nursing homes.

MARGOT O’NEILL, REPORTER: At this nursing home in northern Australia a tick-infested dog wanders through a dilapidated building and yet Star of The Sea nursing home on Thursday Island was fully accredited by the Federal Government last year. That decision has since been modified and new management has been given until next month to repair its buildings.

Local Federal MP Warren Entsch is outraged the facility can’t get more federal money.

WARREN ENTSCH, FEDERAL MP: Somehow or other they were quite happy to tick it off last year and say righto we’re going to give you three years of accreditation at a time when there was still these problems.

MARGOT O’NEILL: The Federal Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency safeguards care in nursing home through a checklist of 44 standards.

They include providing “appropriately skilled and qualified staff” and “appropriate clinical care.”

Australia has a near perfect score of 95 per cent of homes gaining full 44 out of 44 accreditation for three years. Adrian Nye’s mother was in a Victorian nursing home that was given full accreditation at the same time she developed such serious leg infections, she spent four months in hospital.

ADRIAN NYE, FORMER CHAIRMAN, VIC MANAGED INSURANCE AUTHORITY: In my mother’s case its quite bizarre because while my mother was in a bed at that facility the accreditation authority was in their doing its annual or triennial accreditation review. And no blemish was identified in the course of the review.

MARGOT O’NEILL: Adrian Nye, a former senior Victorian public servant, complained about the poor wound management for his mother. The accreditation team was sent back in and the home had to revamp its procedures.

A former chairman of the Victorian insurance scheme including medical indemnity, he believes the two-day accreditation visits was inadequate. He’s calculated the accreditors would have needed more than twice as long to do a thorough job.

ADRIAN NYE: Now it’s just incredible, either they did things so superficially that nothing could be identified, which is probably my suggestion, or they failed to do some of the things they said they’ve done.

MARGOT O’NEILL: Critics say accreditation is too much about paper work and box ticking of processes rather than actual clinical outcomes.

There are numerous examples of homes that have been fully accredited only to be involved in media scandals shortly after. Like the home that had no staff at all rostered on overnight, or the fully accredited home that had a mouse infestation.

Staff in contact with Lateline say homes spend weeks preparing for accreditation and allege that some homes deceive accreditors.

An aged care consultant told us “some nursing homes bring in “a quality co-coordinator whose sole job was to present files full of evidence of quality care and fulfilment of standards. Where evidence could not be found it was simply manufactured.”

A carer told us “most employers train staff to respond to accreditation agency visits. I have been interviewed several times and often your supervisor is present. I have been in difficult situations where if I told the truth I would be sacked.”

The accreditation agency also does unannounced annual spot checks but the results are not public.

For many families and staff the only recourse when things do go wrong is the aged care complaints scheme run by the Department of Health.

ADRIAN NYE: The majority of my life has either been working in the bureaucracy, drafting schemes of this complaint sort or acting as a consultant critiquing their success.

MARGOT O’NEILL: His verdict on the complaints scheme?

ADRIAN NYE: Oh it’s a very sick puppy. It’s actually a complaints scheme without any investigatory curiosity or power, it’s very much a social work model where wanting to hold hands and reconcile and conciliate. But for something as grave as an allegation of gross negligence leading to a wound that puts your mother in an acute hospital for four months with severe pain effects and a risk to life, something more than Kumbaya is required.

MARGOT O’NEILL: The nursing home promised to do better so the matter is now considered closed. But Adrian Nye is left wondering how did the wound start, was it because of poor care, the complaints scheme says it couldn’t decide.

ADRIAN NYE: The response to that was, oh we’re getting different stories, they say its sunburn, your plastic surgeon says it pressure it’s all a bit difficult, the record’s are a bit funny, we can’t conclude anything definitive. Well, I reckon the cops would have a different view to the same set of facts.

MARGOT O’NEILL: Getting at all the relevant information is a problem for families. The Aged Care Act describes any information relating to the affairs of nursing home providers as “protected information”. So a version of aged care WikiLeaks could land you in jail for two years.

ADRIAN NYE: The accreditation agency that ought to use transparency as the, to use the cliche, the sunshine that can keep all this stuff clean and spick and span, it’s exempt from FOI. It hides behind the corporate veil of being a company, what’s that about?

PATRICK REID, LEADING AGED SERVICES AUSTRALIA: I think certainly that more transparency is required. I think the results need to be shared and without that, without more information it is very hard to improve the service.

MARGOT O’NEILL: Lawyers from Slater and Gordon say the Commonwealth could find itself the subject of legal action over nursing home standards, maybe even a class action.

ANDREW BAKER, SLATER AND GORDON: If it can be shown that the Commonwealth owes a duty of care towards the residents of those facilities in terms of its accreditations and it can be shown that they’re accreditations that shouldn’t have been given or renewed, then there is a potential for people to have a claim against the Commonwealth.

MARGOT O’NEILL: The possible class action is being led by marketing consultant Patrea Salter who’s battled for years with a nursing home over her father’s care.

PETREA SALTER, DAUGHTER: He’s an 84-year-old Australian who has done so much for Australia and he’s being made out to be a liar. All his suffering, all his screams for help, all his cries for help, all my cries for help from everyone in the Government, from the scheme are just ignored. It’s just a dreadful, dreadful situation. In Australia we should not treat our elderly like this.

The Liberal leader said the United States could invest more than $1 billion in Australia without being subject to Foreign Investment Review Board rules, but it was different for China’s state-owned enterprises.

Speaking during a trade mission in Beijing, Mr Barnett said that for investment by state-owned enterprises in China, any level of investment from $1 up goes through the FIRB process.

“I think Australia needs to correct that. That is giving the wrong signal to China, and I’ve no doubt, causes resentment,” he said.

Mr Barnett is trying to drum up a major Chinese backer for the $6 billion Oakajee port project in WA’s mid-west.

The project was indefinitely mothballed last year when Japan’s Mitsubishi decided to “slow down” work on the already-stalled plan, after talks with potential joint-venture partners languished.

Oakajee was to export iron ore from the magnetite-rich region, but the low-grade product fell out of favour with a slide in iron ore prices and wavering Chinese demand.

GRIEVANCE DEBATE (published)

Monday, 24 June 2013 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 197

CHAMBER

SPEECH

Date Monday, 24 June 2013 Source House

Page 197 Proof Yes

Questioner Responder

Speaker Rowland, Michelle, MP Question No.

Australia’s wellbeing depends on China

by: By David & Libby Koch –News Limited newspapers

May 10, 2012 10:33AM

THEFederal Budgetblueprint for your finances is that things will stay pretty much how they are now for the next 2 years despite further deterioration in Europe and a stagnant America.

Our saviour continues to be China and the Government is confident their economic boom will keep our commodity prices steaming ahead and our economy growing at 3.25 per cent. But if they’re wrong, and the wheels fall off the rickshaw, the financial impact will be devastating…………

Congratulations for making the excellent speech and sincerely hope that the next Governent will definitely do something about those injustice by making a public apology and abjure the impossible literacy tests.